Story-March-19-17

Majority of young adults in US view Trump’s presidency as ‘illegitimate’: poll

A new poll says that the majority of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 view Donald Trump as an “illegitimate president,” according to TheHill.com.

“The GenForward poll reported by The Associated Press found that 57 percent of young adults see Trump’s presidency as illegitimate, including three-quarters of black respondents and large majorities of Latinos and Asians,” wrote Brooke Seipel on Saturday.

Trump’s ruined credibility: What happens when the White House just can’t be trusted?

President Trump and his aides tell lies and then lie about the lies, which is politically corrosive and dangerous

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was in a difficult spot on Thursday afternoon. Just prior to Spicer’s daily press briefing, the top Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had announced that they had uncovered no evidence to support President Trump’s allegation that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. The Senate committee’s announcement came less than 24 hours after Trump himself told Fox News that evidence was forthcoming, and just a few hours after Spicer said much the same thing on talk radio. Faced with this rebuke of the president’s credibility (and his own), Spicer would have to say something.

B) An angry Trump voter who believed he really would pass health insurance for all.

C) Someone who’s never been in your kitchen.

D) The likely next Supreme Court justice after the Republicans stole the seat that should have gone to an Obama nominee.

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WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

An independent investigation is needed with ALL participants placed under oath to tell what they know and don’t know…

After the break in at the Watergate building, even though the burglars are caught in the act, it wasn’t until after the 1972 election that enough EVIDENCEcould be gathered to take Mr. Nixon down… Let’s put Mr. Clapper under oath … let’s put all the individuals who make claims under OATH to make the claims, so if they LIE these good Americans can be put in prison for the lies…

Although the burglars would be caught in the act, many months would pass before enough details would emerge to create a picture of the events leading up to that night. These men had been hired by representatives of President Nixon’s administration to use illegal means to gather information that could prove useful to Nixon winning the 1972 election.

It wasn’t until the MEDIA had a conversation with Deep Throat that momentum took the story forward… the resignation of Nixon was a process and if the process had been stopped in 1971 because there “was NO evidence”, Nixon might never have resigned.

Opinions vary, but the publicity these media outlets gave to Watergate likely resulted in more consequential political repercussions from the Congressional investigation. Most famous is the story of how Washington Post Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein relied heavily on anonymous sources to reveal that knowledge of the break-in and subsequent attempt to cover it up had connections deep in the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and even the White House.

1971

September 3 – The White House “plumbers” unit – named for their orders to plug leaks in the administration – burglarizes a psychiatrist’s office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

1972

June 17 – Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, are arrested at 2:30 a.m. trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex. Post Story

June 19 – A GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars, The Washington Post reports. Former attorney general John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denies any link to the operation. Post Story

August 1 – A $25,000 cashier’s check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar, The Washington Post reports. Post Story

September 29 – John Mitchell, while serving as attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats, The Post reports. Post Story

October 10 – FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort, The Post reports. Post Story

November 7 – Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota. Post Story

1973

January 30 – Former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. are convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. Five other men plead guilty, but mysteries remain. Post Story

April 30 – Nixon’s top White House staffers, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign over the scandal. White House counsel John Dean is fired.Post Story

June 3 – John Dean has told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times, The Post reports. Post Story

June 13 – Watergate prosecutors find a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, The Post reports. Post Story

July 13 – Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, reveals in congressional testimony that since 1971 Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his offices. Post Story

July 18 – Nixon reportedly orders the White House taping system disconnected.

July 23 – Nixon refuses to turn over the presidential tape recordings to the Senate Watergate Committee or the special prosecutor.Post Story

October 20 – Saturday Night Massacre: Nixon fires Archibald Cox and abolishes the office of the special prosecutor. Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resign. Pressure for impeachment mounts in Congress. Post Story

November 17 – Nixon declares, “I’m not a crook,” maintaining his innocence in the Watergate case. Post Story

December 7 – The White House can’t explain an 18 ½-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed tapes. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig says one theory is that “some sinister force” erased the segment. Post Story

1974

April 30 – The White House releases more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, but the committee insists that the tapes themselves must be turned over. Post Story

July 24 – The Supreme Court rules unanimously that Nixon must turn over the tape recordings of 64 White House conversations, rejecting the president’s claims of executive privilege. Post Story

July 27 – House Judiciary Committee passes the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice.

August 8 – Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign. Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumes the country’s highest office. He will later pardon Nixon of all charges related to the Watergate case. Post Story

I’d like to draw some comparisons and contrasts between our present situation and that of fascist Italy between 1922 and 1945. I choose fascist Italy rather than Nazi Germany because it has always seemed to me a better comparison. Nazi Germany was the extreme militarist, racist and totalitarian variant of Italian fascism, which was more adaptable, pragmatic, rooted in reality and also more incompetent, ineffectual and half-hearted, all of which seem true to our condition today. Italy was the original form, while Germany was an offshoot. Although there have been many European and some Latin American varieties of fascism since then, the Italian model was the first and the one that has had the most lasting influence.

Trump’s budget would cut funding for Appalachia — and his allies in coal country are livid

During the campaign, Donald Trump billed himself as the “last shot” for coal country. He alone could save regions like Appalachia that had long suffered from poverty and dwindling coal jobs. And voters in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky believed him — choosing Trump over Hillary Clinton by wide, wide margins.

So it’s striking that President Trump’s first budget proposal would slash and burn several key programs aimed at promoting economic development in coal regions — most notably, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Economic Development Administration. In recent years, these programs have focused on aiding communities that have been left behind as mining jobs vanished.

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Memo to the Media: How Not to Cover the President

What J-School never taught you.

What J-School never taught you.Dear esteemed colleagues, former colleagues and other members of the responsible media I’ve never met:

I am not being sarcastic. Honest. I respect your work and I know that you — we — are the only thing that has ever stood between a robust democracy and the hydra-headed evils of corruption, greed, incompetence and ignorance. Not to mention the hypocrisy of lies and self-aggrandizement from an unrelenting narcissist with no ability to temper his own apparent madness.